This morning, I woke up to an email from my mom with a link to a CNN article entitled "My Friends' Weddings are Putting Me Deep in Debt." The piece profiles a guy named Christopher who has, I kid you not, a $10,000 credit card bill—which is swiftly gathering interest—from just one year of attending various pals' nuptials.

Sure, it sounds crazy. But I've never actually totaled up full amount I've spent on friends' weddings myself because I've been terrified to know the truth.

Until now. (Thanks, Mom!)

Over the past three years, I've been to nine "destination-for-me" weddings, in Philly, New York (twice), Orlando, Vancouver, and San Fran (twice). I'm going to Hawaii and Chicago for two more festivities within the next year.

In one particularly nuptial-heavy 12-month period, my guy and I attended six weddings. Just counting hotels, air fare, wedding gifts, and bachelor/bachelorette hotel/air fare, as well as bridal party dress-buying and tux-renting, we've spent well over $10,000 collectively. Yikes.

Granted, I'm lucky that my guy and I can somewhat shoulder these costs together by sharing a hotel room. And, in the interest of full disclosure, we made mini vacations out some of these trips, spending one or two more days in each city for sightseeing.

But, for 10 grand, we could have gone on a three-week luxury vacation instead. Even though we've been together for almost four years, my guy and I have only gone on three weekends away together that weren't for other people's weddings.

Would we have done anything differently, though? Honestly, I couldn't imagine not traveling to attend our friends' big days. Most of the weddings we've been to were for our super-close friends (some of them are pals we've been tight with since elementary school), so not going wasn't an option. We wanted to be there.

Perhaps in the distant future, it will be more common to watch friends' weddings via Skype instead of dropping serious Gs on actually being in there in person. But, for now, my guy and I will have to just keep putting our just-the-two-of-us trips on hold and keep vacationing-by-wedding-attending until the rest of our friends tie that knot.